Newly Discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald Story Published

The work had been turned down for publication when he was alive

A long-lost story by F. Scott Fitzgerald has been published 76 years after it was written.

“Temperature” is running in the current issue of The Strand Magazine and will appear online in three months, according to New York Magazine. Fitzgerald wrote the story just a year before his death at a particularly troubled time in his career; he had moved to Hollywood to write movies but was not a success there, and his fiction career had stalled. He wrote to his literary agent, Harold Ober, that he had taken the liberty of submitting the story for publication to the Saturday Evening Post himself, but was rejected. “Sending a story direct may be bad policy but one doesn’t consider that when one is living on money from a hocked Ford,” he wrote.

The Strand’s managing editor Andrew F. Gulli discovered “Temperature” earlier this year while looking through some of Fitzgerald’s papers at Princeton University, the AP reports. The 8,000-word story seems to be a thinly veiled portrait of Fitzgerald’s own situation at the time: its protagonist is Emmet Monsen, an alcoholic writer floundering in Los Angeles. “[A]s for that current dodge ‘No reference to any living character is intended’—no use even trying that,” Fitzgerald wrote.

Scholars of the Great Gatsby author knew of the story’s existence from his correspondence, but believed it to be lost. Another rediscovered Fitzgerald story, “Thank You for the Light,” was published by the New Yorker in 2012; the same magazine had turned it down for publication in 1936.

2 Women Have Made it to the Final Phase of Ranger School

Dan Lamothe—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesRanger students, including one of the first women ever to take the Ranger School course, wait to ascend Mount Yonah in northern Georgias on Tuesday, July 14, 2015 as part of the school's Mountain Phase.

They begin the last stage on Sunday

Two women have passed the challenging Mountain Phase of the U.S. Army’s elite Ranger School and will now advance to the third and final phase in the swamps of Florida—giving them the chance to become the first women ever to graduate from the rigorous program.

The class began with 19 women, but only three remain: the two who advanced to phase three and one woman who was “recycled”—she, along with 60 men, can try the Mountain Phase again. The two women going on to the final phase are joined by 125 men, the Washington Post reports. Phase three begins on Sunday, when the Ranger students will parachute into Pensacola, Fla. If any of the women pass, they will be able to wear the Army’s Ranger Tab, but will not serve with the 75th Ranger Regiment alongside many of their fellow graduates.

The class is part of the Army’s initiative to integrate women into combat positions; it has until 2016 to open all jobs to female soldiers, or give proof that certain positions cannot be filled by women.

A David Foster Wallace Reading List for The End of the Tour

What to read before seeing the movie

The new David Foster Wallace biopic centers around the writer’s most iconic novel, Infinite Jest, as the story is adapted from writer David Lipsky’s interviews with Wallace at the end of his press tour for the text. Yet while Infinite Jest is considered a must-read for students of contemporary literature, not everyone has the time or inclination to power through its daunting 1,079 pages.

Here’s what you can read in significantly less time before (or after) seeing Jason Segel star as the legendary writer in The End of the Tour, in theaters Friday.

Short

“This Is Water.” It’s the speech that launched a thousand tattoos, Wallace’s commencement address to the graduates of Kenyon College in 2005. He offers a philosophy for resetting your default (read: egocentric) way of thinking about the world, promising, “It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.” You can read a transcript, buy the book version or listen to the original recording.

“Federer as a Religious Experience.” Wallace wrote an ode to the Swiss tennis pro fresh off his 2006 win over Rafael Nadal at Wimbledon, not profiling the player but expounding on the joys of watching him in action. “The metaphysical explanation,” he says, “is that Roger Federer is one of those rare, preternatural athletes who appear to be exempt, at least in part, from certain physical laws.”

“Consider the Lobster.” Wallace visited the Maine Lobster Festival for Gourmet Magazine in 2003 (the story was published a year later) and thoroughly explored the question, “Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?” If you like the story, you can check out his essay collection by the same name.

“The Depressed Person.” Wallace’s short story, originally published in Harper’s and later in his collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, is about a woman struggling with, yes, depression. Though the first sentence announces “the impossibility of sharing and articulating this pain,” Wallace of course finds a way to share and articulate it fluently.

The Broom of the System. Wallace’s first novel, about a young woman whose great-grandmother has disappeared from her nursing home and whose cockatiel has started speaking, was published in 1987 when he was just 24.

The Pale King. His final (and unfinished) novel was published posthumously in 2011; it was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It’s long, but only half as long as Infinite Jest.

The company wants to learn how space whisky compares to Earth whisky

Japanese distillery Suntory is undertaking an alcoholic science experiment to find out how its whiskeys age in space.

The company announced in a release that it would send five different types of whiskey up to the International Space Station on Aug. 16, as well as a bottle of 40% ethanol, to study the “development of mellowness” in a microgravity environment. Identical samples will stay on Earth for comparison when the space whiskey returns. Some of the samples will remain in orbit for one year, some for a period of two years or more (the final number is still to be determined).

Suntory/AFP/Getty ImagesPouched whisky, from Japanese company Suntory, which will be sent up to space at JAXA’s space center in Tsukuba, Ibraraki prefecture, outside Tokyo on July 22, 2015.

If project is successful, it will help the folks at Suntory pin down the “mechanism that makes alcohol mellow.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the space whisky will not be for sale, meaning customers are going to have to put their dreams of drinking a truly out-of-this-world spirit on hold. But who knows? If the experiment is a hit, an astro aged bottle might one day appear in liquor store right here on Earth.

Jon Stewart Reveals His Final Daily Show Guests

The host stuck with comedians

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Jon Stewart has named his final three guests on The Daily Show, and it looks like the host is sticking with his own kind for the last week of his run. Fellow comedians Louis C.K., Denis Leary and Amy Schumer will sit opposite Stewart in the lead up to his finale next Thursday, the Washington Post reports.

Stewart has hosted big names in culture and politics in recent episodes, including President Obama, J.J. Abrams, Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough. Plans for the final episode are naturally being kept under wraps, but many have speculated that Stephen Colbert will make an appearance. The show will last 50 minutes to squeeze in extra goodbye time, and Comedy Central will run a best-of marathon leading up to Stewart’s last episode on Thursday.

Judy Blume Helps Husband Who Lost His Wife’s Treasured Copy of Her Book

Aaron Davidson—Getty ImagesJudy Blume In Conversation With WLRN's Alicia Zuckerman at Temple Judea on June 15, 2015 in Miami, Florida.

The author is sending a signed copy of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret

Judy Blume has come to the aid of a distraught husband who accidentally threw out a his wife’s cherished copy of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

The man had posted signs about the missing book in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, which someone photographed and posted on Instagram. The message read, “I accidentally gave this book away on Saturday July 25th in a box on the corner of of Green and Franklin Streets in Greenpoint. The book is extremely important to my wife. It was a keepsake from her mother and is irreplaceable. On the inside cover is a note that reads “Christmas 1991.” If you happened to pick up this book can you please get in touch with me.”

When the post was brought to Judy Blume’s attention, she tweeted that she would do her best to help:

Oh no tragic! Will send signed copy. Not the same, I know. Let's hope it saves the marriage. Not sure I can find that cover but will try.

HBO Exec Says Jon Snow Is Dead, Dead, Dead

So what was he doing in Belfast?

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HBO programming president Michael Lombardo has weighed in on the rumors about Game of Thrones, and there’s good news and bad news for fans.

The bad news, depending on your character loyalty, is that Jon Snow really is dead. “Dead is dead is dead is dead. He be dead,” Lombardo said at the Television Critics Association press tour on Thursday, the L.A. Times reports. (Then again, he would say that either way, wouldn’t he?)

And as for those proponents of R+L=J, their theory could be put to the test on screen: Lombardo hinted, “There’s enormous storytelling to be mined in a prequel.”

The band introduced their new song, "Drag Me Down," on Friday

Correction appended, July 31, 2015

One Direction has released its first single since Zayn Malik quit the band, and fans already seem very excited about “Drag Me Down.”

The band took to Twitter to announce the single, with Liam Payne calling the song a “bit of a surprise” and writing, “I hope you love it as much as we do.” A Harry Styles fan account tweeted, “Its so good the boys haven’t done such a good job in a very long time.”

Styles sings the top vocals on the track, a part Malik usually filled, USA Today reports. “Drag Me Down” is the first single off the band’s upcoming album, due in November. The band is currently touring in the U.S. and will perform in Indianapolis on Friday night; perhaps Hoosiers will be treated to the first live performance of the song.

Listen to “Drag Me Down” below.

Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly attributed a Twitter post about the album being “so good” and saying “the boys haven’t done such a good job in a very long time.” The post was from a fan Twitter account.

The Beatles Probably ‘Forgot’ Dozens of Unrecorded Songs

"We didn’t have tape recorders"

The Beatles have one of the most impressive catalogues in music history, but fans probably missed out on “dozens” more songs that the band “forgot” before they could record them.

Paul McCartney said in a recent interview that he and John Lennon did not have recording devices when they first started writing music, explaining, “we would write a song and just have to remember it. And there was always the risk that we’d just forget it. If the next morning you couldn’t remember it—it was gone. There must have been dozens lost this way.”

McCartney said today things are very different since songwriters can record their ideas on their phone. Still, he said the technological limitation may have improved their music: “You had to write songs that were memorable, because you had to remember them or they were lost!”

All this begs the question, why didn’t anyone give the lads a pencil and some paper?

Here Is the 2015 Man Booker Prize Longlist

Five American novels made the cut

The 2015 Man Booker Prize longlist is in, and this year’s selection is roughly half men (six) and half women (seven). The prize was historically limited to authors from the U.K., the Commonwealth, Ireland and Zimbabwe; this is only the second year that it has been open to anyone writing in the English language and published in the U.K. The longlist includes five American authors, up from four last year.

One author on the list, Anne Enright, has already won a Man Booker Prize for her 2007 novel The Gathering. Tom McCarthy, Andrew O’Hagan and Marilynne Robinson have all previously been shortlisted, though Robinson was then in the Man Booker International Prize category, which has been reenvisioned to award a book in translation now that the general award is open to all Anglophone writers.

This year’s roundup also includes three debut novels, from Bill Clegg, Chigozie Obioma and Anna Smaill.